Abstract

‘Midpointness’ is an ongoing and generative project that is dismantled and reconstructed by the accretion of the surrounding connections, associations, influences and voices of the curators, artists, students and other audiences who contribute to it. These are in the form of artworks, public events, texts, artefacts, performances or other interventions.
 
It is entirely open to input and impact from a wide range of agents.
 
Generally speaking, the project seeks to invite a consideration of the ‘work of art’ as art’s labour or task. More specifically, we seek to explore the dynamics of inner/outer dialogues of the process of artistic work, opening up potentials that any artistic agent might hope for, or stumble across, when he/she explores the generative potential of the ‘work’ of art.
 
For “For, About, Nearby” we propose to develop a text work and ‘speak it’ from a standing speaker in a public thoroughfare in the conference venue. The spoken text will be a play on the tradition of the conference ‘abstract’. The abstract is the site of an outline of intention and creatively speaking can often be the antithesis to the generation of creative work. Here we couple it with an ‘obstruction’, as a means of aggravating  and diverting the attempt at a conclusion towards which an abstract, and indeed a formal presentation, might be aimed.
 
‘Obstract’ is aimed, albeit circuitously, at a process of intervention in which the ‘centre’ (the work and/or the text) and its surrounding universe are completely indivisible. As such the principle of ‘footnotes’ filters through to the whole text; the footnotes being analogous to the surrounding constellations within which the ‘centre’ of the work sits, swapping footnotes for centre and vice versa. The footnotes refer to points both real and imagined in the past, present and future.